I’m learning the balance of allowing myself to feel sadness, grief and loss while creating and doing my work. I have no control over this at the moment. The more I surrender to my emotions, the more they transform and I’m able to create from that space.

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Life comes with it’s highs and lows. People mostly share about the highs which I find is easy to share. I don’t see many people sharing about lows openly and honestly until I meet up with them and they tell me that’s exactly how they felt 😃 Maybe it’s because of not wanting to go there again or maybe the desire to be vulnerable to a controlled extent where they still get to keep their appearances.

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The lows are where you become who you are. They’re the your stones that turn into diamonds. They’re the richness of life, raw, real and vulnerable.

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The most loving and compassionate people I met are the ones who went through hell, who faced their darkness, their lows and went out from the other side, transformed. You don’t become a beautiful person by only experiencing happiness, joy, bliss etc. You can’t have depth with only experiencing these emotions. If you only allow yourself to feel those ones, you’re living your life in denial, removed from life itself. You’re not living fully.

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What doesn’t kill you doesn’t always make you stronger. It can make you a closed hearted, resentful, fearful and angry person towards life as well. But when you accept what’s happening and surrender, you grow from it. The more you resist it, the more it’s going to carry on.

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Especially if you menstruate and bleed regularly, before and during period is a time where all your stuff comes up. If you look closely, that period pain is telling you something. That feeling of loneliness, sadness etc is there to be felt fully. Allow it before you jump to wanting to fix it. Painkillers are not the answer.

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Over the years, especially when I was small, I learnt to be joyful and interested to make friends. And I got good at it. I can make friends with anyone. I love that side of me which is being a social butterfly. It makes me feel alive and connected.

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I also have a super depressed side to me that just doesn’t want anything to do with life. It wants to hide in a room, curl up into a ball and not exist for a while. In that egoic pattern, I can’t even cry. I don’t feel, I’m completely numb and apathetic.

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Now I’m learning to accept that side, talk to it, write about it, love it and transform it. Every emotion moves through you when you allow it ❤️

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Acceptance is the key. If you’re not accepting as life shows you things, you can’t move forward. You’re stuck. Accept that your loved one passed away, accept that you’ve been cheated on, accept that your friend stabbed you in the back. For your own freedom, see the situation for what it is without putting a meaning to it.

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I saw a beautiful friend of mine last week. After catching up, she told me I felt more loving, grounded and accepting. See in my head, everything is turning upside down and I’m loosing my shit. If you feel like that, have an honest reflection from a close friend and don’t beat yourself up. You might be doing so much better than you think you are 😉

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Here’s how you can process emotions like sadness, loss, grief:

- Accept that you feel sad. Even this can be revolutionary if you usually deny your sadness. It doesn’t mean anything, it just mean that you feel sad. You’re a human with emotions.

- Close your eyes. Take 5 deep breaths into your belly while allowing the feeling to be there.

- If you feel teary, let those tears come. If you feel rage, let the rage be there.

- Out loud, say how you feel, to the person you’re angry at, or to yourself while feeling sad. Say anything else that wants to come out.

- Hold and hug yourself.

- (If you find it challenging to get into the feeling, start writing how you feel and let the feeling talk without censoring.)

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And remember, after a low, there’s always a high. Crying is not weak, it’s powerful. It’s a gift for yourself from yourself in form of a beautiful release. After big good cries I always feel lifted, calm, grounded and happy. I feel joy starting to come in again in mini waves.

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If you have a job and have things to do, allow yourself that 30 min to feel, to not do anything but to be with your pain like you would do for a friend. Whenever I go inwards, cry, write, someone books their place in my workshop or wants to have a session with me. Always. It happened today as I wrote this post.

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Any unprocessed emotions will stay in your body until you feel it fully. It’s the fear of feeling we’re scared of. Once you’re in it, it’s not actually that bad. But the disconnection you have from feeling reveals itself as chronic pain, a disease, numbness. It can even effect your face. For example the left side of your face can change becoming heavier.

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I went to 5rhythms movement class the other day. One of the dancers just got qualified in teaching, so the teacher invited her into the huge circle of maybe 70 people. She went in with pure joy, ecstasy, celebrating herself and her success. Then she invited everyone else to join in. Few people joined in. Everyone else was clapping in the outside circle. I watched them, I watched the people in the middle dancing, smiling and laughing. That’s when it hit me:

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✨ In life, you have to participate ✨

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Whatever it is, wherever you are, however you’re feeling, bring that into your life. Don’t exclude your sadness, your insecurities, include them. Show them to people, love them.

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If you want to feel your emotions fully and transform any heaviness, shame, frustration, sadness, come to breathwork next Thursday, the 15th. Bring all of you to the table. Even the parts you don’t accept or love about you as they will hunt you back until you learn to love them ❤️

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Make sure to book your ticket if you want to join, we’re half full now. Here’s the link to book:

I talked about surrendering to love at LOVEx Talks Sex and Relationships on Tuesday 😍

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Standing up and talking vulnerably and openly infront of 50 people felt like the scariest thing I’ve done in a long time. I’ve been avoiding talking and it was about time..I want to tell how this came about as it was a great lesson for me..Some of you read my ‘I want to surrender’, the post about lovemaking. Here it is if you haven’t :.https://www.facebook.com/isik.tlabar/posts/10160031020585300.3 weeks ago, the organizer of LOVEx Talks Scott, read it and reached out to me saying he loved the way i wrote it, geniune, open and beautiful and would love me to speak at the event..So I said yes, I’d love to 😍.I gave a Goddess Circle workshop the day before so I was focusing on that up until then. When the day came, I was pretty nervous, my thoughts were going in loops and I was forgetting to eat..Anyway, the day went by, arrived at the venue, went up there, feeling super nervous. I talked about letting go of the need to control, being vulnerable, surrender in relationships and also in lovemaking..It’s easy to sit and watch speakers and judge them but it’s a whole another reality when you go up there yourself. It’s pretty surreal, I can’t even remember what I said. Later on, I found out as I was speaking, a guy outside on the street was playing Imagine by John Lennon. It made me teary, that song literally is the world I want to live in..One of the many things that touched me afterwards was that 2 Turkish women came up to me saying, its inspiring to see someone from the same sexually repressed background putting herself out there sharing about these topics. They thanked me, I felt so grateful 😍 (I am Turkish, I grew up in Istanbul then moved to UK when I was 18.).A part of me always believed I have to go to networking events, do webinars etc, do all these things to be visible. But actually, I just have to write..Writing is my medicine, its how I realise, let go, forgive, feel, grieve, integrate, complete and move on. The bonus side of it is when I share, I find that so many people resonate with them. So when I just write and share, all these magical things come to me as a confirmation of what I’m doing is true. An opportunity to speak, to write in a magazine as a monthly columnist and to collaborate to run a women’s retreat ❤️ (Will share more on the last one soon 😉).It took me few days to digest, integrate what happened but I feel like now I adjusted to this new energy. Ready for the next level 😍.This showed me, once again, always do what’s true and the rest will take care of itself ✨.Sending you love 💛.